This is a slightly different blog from the usual. This won't be about old games but rather about the BlizzCon that just recently took place. While I do not approve about the bullshit that Blizzard pulled considering Blitzchung and Hong Kong, I still wanted to voice my opinion about the recent announcements. I will not talk about Hearthstone since I have next to no interest in that game but will talk about what I thought about Diablo, WoW and Overwatch announcements.
Diablo 4
There isn't too much to unpack about the Diablo 4 announcement trailers other than the fact that they look pretty cool. It looks like the game is launching with 3 classes, and the maximum group size is most likely going to be 3 as well instead of the 4 that it was previously. This is a trend that can be seen in several new releases and a trend that will most likely continue from here on out.
Having only played a little bit of Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 completely, I am only worried that the gameplay is going to be simplified even more to target a more mainstream audience. This in turn can make the game a bit too easy or bland to the original fans of the game, in a way that diablo 3 already did but even more.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
I did not properly play the previous expansion of WoW because it was really bad and I was hoping this announcement trailer to go the obvious route and bring back, In my opinion, one of the best expansions that was Wrath of the Lichking. From what I understood about the last expansion, Sylvanas went crazy and has now destroyed the Helm of Domination revealing the Shadowlands. Previously it was said that someone has to always sit on the frozen throne and I really wonder what does it mean now that the throne is empty.
With the Shadowlands expansion there are going to be some huge changes. One of the biggest changes is going to be the fact that level cap is going to be scaled down to 60 and all the previous expansions areas are going to be scalable and optional and if everything is going to be scalable, is now every old content going to be impossible to solo for mount and achievement gatherers?
The feature trailer also shows us that the shadowlands is going to be full of basically all the enemies that we encountered this far and more, and that you are going to have to earn every factions respect in the shadowlands, that tells me that the expansion is going to skip the usual 'new expansions lore gameplay' and go straight into the boring reputation grind late game that I always disliked.
Overwatch 2
While the Overwatch 2 announcement trailer was very emotional, I hated it. Overwatch 2 is what's called 'a massive money grab' and the fans of the franchise are going to eat it up like it's a feast. While Overwatch is suffering from a lower playerbase than it originally had, this is not the solution. I'm not saying I have the solution but this is not it. While Overwatch 2 might boost the playerbase for a short while and in the meantime bring massive profits to Blizzard, it is not going to 'revive' the game. This would have been much better as a DLC/expansion that would have been priced accordingly, but there is no way in hell I'm going to pay for a full game to get what I already had plus some extra conent, no matter how much progression carries over.
Another reason why Overwatch '2' sounds like a bad idea, at least to me that is, is just because of what it is. Overwatch is technically a MOBA and has been built as such from the beginning. MOBA market, even though almost everyone has their clear favorite, is very competitive. What Overwatch 2 is doing, is taking currently one of the smaller, but still popular MOBA, and cutting its playerbase in half. This is the reason that other MOBAs have just been updating their games, and not releasing a completely another one, is to keep their playerbase unified. In my opinion, like I said already, sell Overwach 2 as a story expansion/DLC and release the gameplay changes as a free patch. If they really need the money, they can go the hearthstone route and sell different types of stories, or different story lines as separate DLC.
Here are my thoughts about BlizzCon, I'm sure I've missed some info but I'm mainly going based on the launch trailers that were shown in BlizzCon.
